Huang, Su-Shu (1915–1977)

Su-Shu Huang was a Chinese-American astronomer who, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was
among the first to carry out detailed analyses of the types of stars which
might be capable of nurturing life, especially advanced life, on planets
circling around them.1, 2, 3 He drew attention to the variety
of habitable zones that might be found around
stars of different size and spectral type,
and made other contributions in the early years of SETI.
He suggested it would be difficult for any technological race, in the face
of continually negative results, to sustain interest either in searching
for or beaming out interstellar signals over long periods of time. For this
reason, he thought that a powerful system capable of "eavesdropping" on
stray communications (see Cyclops, Project)
would have the best chance of success. Huang came to the United States in
1947 on a fellowship granted by the Chinese Nationalist government, earned
a Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Chicago under Otto Struve,
and in 1950 moved, at the same time as Struve, to the University
of California, Berkeley. Eight years later he joined NASA.